RESIST TALES FROM A FUTURE WORTH FIGHTING AGAINST Edited by Gary Whitta, Christie Yant, Hugh Howey ABOUT THE ACLU THANK YOU FOR buying this book. By doing so youre helping to support an important cause. A minimum of 50 of the purchase price will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union. For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nations guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution ...

THE FINAL FRONTIER STORIES OF EXPLORING SPACE, COLONIZING THE UNIVERSE, AND FIRST CONTACT Edited by Neil Clarke For Johnny INTRODUCTION I consider this anthology to be a sister to Galactic Empires, which was published last year. During the preliminary reading for that project, I came across several great stories that werent quite right for the anthology, typically because the empire element was non-existent or too thin. As that list continued to grow, a theme began to develop around them: space ...

Elizabeth Bear THIS CHANCE PLANET We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. Maurice Maeterlinck Its not like Id be selling my own liver. Ilya held casually to a cracked strap, swaying with the motion of the Metro. Petra Ivanovna. Are you listening to me Sorry, I said. Id been trading stares with a Metro dog. My feet were killing me in heels I should have stuffed into my ...

Elizabeth Bear Karen Memory This book is for Karen Memery Bruce, who is not actually a seamstress but who is a librarian and a puppeteer. Chapter One You aint gonna like what I have to tell you, but Im gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and Im one of the girls what works in the Htel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Htel has a little hat over the o like that. Its French, so Beatrice tells me. Some call it the Cherry Hotel. But most just say its ...

Old Venus edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois For Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger, who would love to paint the wallowing dinosaurs of swampy Venus Introduction Return to Venusport by Gardner Dozois DAWN ON VENUS: The sleek, furry heads of the web-footed amphibious Venusians break water near one of the rare archipelagos in the world-girdling ocean. Nearby, the toothy head and long, snaky neck of a Plesiosaur-like sea creature momentarily rears above the waves. Elsewhere, vast swamps ...

Elizabeth Bear FASTER GUN Online Version 2. Doc Holliday leaned his head way back, tilting his hat to shade his eyes from the glare of the November sun and said, Well, that still looks like some Jules Verne shit to me. The hulk that loomed over, curving gently outward to a stalklike prow, could have been the rust-laceworked, rust-orange hulk of any derelict ironclad. Except it was a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, and a hundred times too big to be a ship. It was too big, in fact, to be an ...

Elizabeth Bear BOOK OF IRON This is for The Jeff. One Bijou bolted alone through the marble and lapis corridors of the Beys palace like a messenger-boy fearing the back of his masters hand. The red-black springs of her curls bounced against her skull with each step. Her Northern shoes flapped in her hand she ran barefoot, bare soles sure on checkerboard floors that had warmed already with the heat of the day. Behind her, something dry rattled as if in pursuit: Ambrosias, one of her artifices. ...

Elizabeth Bear BONE AND JEWEL CREATURES This book is for Jay. One Bijous fingers angled from her palms as if someone had bent them aside under great heat and pressure. She shuffled about her cavernous, shadowed workshop in parody of a brides hesitation step. Eighty years a Wizard of Messalinethe city of jackals, the empire of marketshad left their wear. It was not that she grew frail. She had no opportunity for frailty when her work with forge and hammer, with wire and pliers kept her strong. ...

Carnival Elizabeth Bear For Stephen and Asha BOOK ONE The Festival of Meat 1 MICHELANGELO OSIRIS LEARY KUSANAGIJONES HAD BEEN drinking since fourteen hundred. He didnt plan on stopping soon. He occupied a bubbleport on the current observation deck of Kaiwo Maru,where he had been since he started drinking, watching a yellow mainsequence star grow. The sun had the look of a dancer swirling in veils, a Van Gogh starscape. Eons before, it had blundered into a cloud of interstellar gas and was still ...

Elizabeth Bear Hell and Earth Promethean Age 4 The Stratford Man 2 Authors Note This book is dedicated to William Shakespeare, Christofer Marley, and Benjamin Jonson a glovers boy, a cobblers son, and a bricklayers redheaded stepchildfor building the narrative foundations upon which we poor moderns now twist our own stories, as Ovid and others laid flagstones for them. May this humble effort honor their memories, and what they have left us. Touchstone:If thou beest not damnd for this, the ...

Shadows over Baker Street Edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan As always, for Kathy . . . For Art Cover and Lydia Marano. M. R. And for Jennifer, thanks for making this happen. J. P. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu INTRODUCTION The ...

ELIZABETH BEAR Dust 1 light from a high window To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. QUENTIN CRISP At the corner of the window, a waxen spider spun. Riens trained eye noticed the spider, the way her spinning caught the light. But Rien did not move her rag to break the threads and sweep the cobweb down. She pressed to the wall between that window and the door and held her breath, praying like the spider that no eye would fall on her, as Lady Ariane Conn and her knights ...

Elizabeth Bear Grail This book is for Stella Evans, Liz Bourke, and Maddie Glymour. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place this is none other but the house of God, and this is ...